I PASSED MY EXAM!!

Alright folks, I'm going to take this momment to celebrate here as I have JUST PASSED MY SUPER HUGE CALIFORNIA STATE EXAM for environmental science. I'm pretty proud of myself right now as the passing rate is about 30% (and this was my first time too!!). Ok, that's enough self congratulations. Back to the real world. :)

Congratulations Megan!

Chris' sister Megan was accepted into all of the colleges to which she applied. Now comes that difficult part-Which one are you going to choose?? Congrats Megan!

On the dock at home (Seattle). Sonja, Alex, Megan and Chris. What you can't see in the picture is that the dock is tiny. We had to walk carefully as not to send someone flying into the water. Our shoes still got soaking wet.

Flying Day

Flugtag "Flying Day"

Chris' brother Greg is a designer in RedBull's Flugtag which is scheduled for April 29th in Tempe, Arizona. His entry is titled AK Dogsled. I think we're going to join the expected 300,000 other spectators to cheer him on. Chris might even participate! Good Luck Greg!

Feeding the trout. Don't fall off grandpa!

We were in Seattle for a incredibly brief visit last weekend and we had a chance to swing by our wedding place for some last minute planning. I'm hoping that the dog is included in the wedding package. :)

The Famous Dog

Bailey is going to be on tv!
Look for him Thursday through Monday:
http://www.campilene.com/webcam/webcam.htm

The Perfect Dog for Pete

Pedro, You should get a dog like this!

Chris, come home! The house is overflowing with packages!

And we thought the Willamette River was bad...

For all you rowers out there:
Aren't you glad we never encountered this??!!

More Costa Rica

I was explaining in an earlier post the difficulties of driving a bike with no brakes. And I have no idea why my text is hyperlinked but I can't undo it so it'll just have to stay like that. But we still managed to get lots of work done. And, as I also mentioned earlier, I got sick later and spent most of my time in bed. Unfortunately, it was right in the middle of the research project so I'd work for as long as I could and then take a nap outside the lab. Oh, the joys of research. I was also going to explain why it wasn't very popular to go off the path (even on a bicycle) but decided that this picture explained it quite clearly. This is a jumping viper, I believe.

More Grass

For someone that doesn't like grass very much (I get rashes on contact), I take a lot of pictures of the stuff.

Well, we're back to dog pictures. Close you're eyes and scroll down if you're tired of seeing them

Bailey doesn't look very repentent here, does he?Where is our dog?

And why is he under the house?

Days Gone By

I was sorting through my desk tonight and came across a cd that a friend had sent me. She took these photos while we were studying tropical biology in Costa Rica my Junior year of college. She has a great love of macrophotography, as showcased in her amazing photos.






I'm surfing!

My research partner Megan got an infected leg while we were conducting a study at the field station and had to use crutches. Since we had to travel long distances to collect data, I simply stashed her in the front of my bicycle and off we went. It worked fairly well until we discovered that the bike had no brakes.
Dendrobates pumilio (Strawberry posion dart frog)
Beetles
I manage to find dogs in all places in the world. This one happened to be at an organic trout farm (Cerro del muerte). And, as I discovered later, this one also had fleas. yuck.
Harvesting bananas (Dole).
Costa Rica has some giant insects.
Frog.
Very cool beetle.
I'm not sure if it's really cool or really dorky that I can give the scientific name for most of these butterflies.

Water on leaf

The last drop.

From Garbage to Art

Chris found this window covering buried in a garbage heap. I reclaimed it, sanded it down, and slapped some paint onto it and it became an art ornament in our living room. You can't tell in this picture but it's a dark purple which matches the couch pillows and flower pots in our asian/mexican/modern themed living room.

New Tent

We just got a new tent! So of course we had to give it a test run in the backyard last night. It was great. It poured buckets last night but so far we haven't discovered any leaks. We got a three-person tent so it could accommodate Bailey; however, he spent most of the night curled up on my feet so we probably could have done with a two-person tent.

Check out our snazzy electric lawnmower and the lawn I mowed all by myself.